I don’t know much about the life and times of the US musician, Kid Rock although I did enjoy his turn onstage with Grandmaster Flash and Chuck D at the Run DMC tribute a few years back. The duet he did with Sheryl Crow, Picture, was good, too. I even learnt how to play that one. It didn’t have the same kind of feel coming out of the mouth of a middle class boy from the UK doing both vocal parts by himself though.

So that’s all I know about Kid Rock. That and a response he gave to a question about what it was like to make sweet love to the 90’s tv goddess, Pamela Anderson. Rather than answer that it was no one’s business but his, Kid Rock stated that ‘even gold plated pussy gets old.’ Which is pretty crass as you might expect from someone who dresses as he does. A hat, no top and trackies, in case you aren’t familiar. But I can kind of see where he is coming from. Not about the sex with Pamela Anderson, I don’t know anything about that. Or about gold plated pussy, which sounds odd and uncomfortable for all involved. But about the idea that something which you’d expect to be spectacular, can become ordinary, routine.

I often take walks late at night with a torch, a tripod and a camera. There’s a few reasons for this. One though, is to photograph stars, or have photographs with stars in, which is a way for me to express what it feels like to live this far from where I was born. In a country which has always seemed to be at the end of the world. So I like to have stars in the pictures, but I have little time for the Instagram-fantastic star splats where the sky takes up the whole frame. Or there’s a tent in the bottom corner. Or some half-wit gazing ignorantly up to the heavens with a torch stuck on his head. You’d expect these images to awe and amaze, but the sheer weight, and lack of context,means they pass you by, very few of them leaving any lasting impression.

So that’s the trick. Using a fairly well worn photographic style- the night sky- and making pictures that take root. Rather than just another image to flick a like at on Instagram.